Storms began building early in the day, with a thunderstorm forming and moving through the extreme eastern edge of Gold Canyon, from around 11:00am to 11:45am. (See the radar loop from 11:02am to 11:45am to view the development and movement of this storm.) Around this same time, several showers and thunderstorms were forming to the North of Payson moving toward the South. By 3:25pm, the thunderstorms that were North of Payson progressed southward and strengthened forming a line across the entire Northern border of Pinal County. (See the radar loop from 2:55pm to 3:25pm.) Around 3:28pm, numerous interesting cloud formations could be seen directly above the Superstitions Mountains, as air was being forced up, over and around the mountain. As the air was forced up the backside of the Superstitions, it cooled the air temperature to the dew point allowing these unique cloud formation to be created. (See photo taken at 3:28pm below this discussion.) The line of thunderstorms continued to move toward the south, with very heavy rainfall over the Superstition Mountains, including Apache Junction and Gold Canyon. The first measurable rain recorded at our location was at 3:55pm, with the heaviest rain moving through around 4:00pm, when we recorded a high rain rate of 1.40in/hr. at 4:03pm. Light to moderate rain continued until around 4:50pm. (See radar loop from 3:38pm to 4:08 to watch the storm move into the area.) The overall storm total at our location was 0.38in.. With the heavy rainfall that occurred in and around the area, numerous washes began flowing shortly after the heavy rainfall ended, and continued to flow throughout the afternoon. (See the photos below, taken at 5:17pm and 5:27pm)

Mike, in Gold Canyon near Falling Star and Cloud View, reported, 0.58in. of rain. He noted that the rain came in fast and hard, with washes in the area running after 25 to 30 minutes. Harry, near Mining Camp measured 2.00in of rainfall with this storm. The rain gauge on Kings Ranch road reported 0.31in.. Thank you for your rain reports! The above rain totals were reported to us by private individuals. The accuracy of these reports is unknown. If it rained at your location, let us know by clicking on the link at the top of the page titled "Visitors Rain/Weather Reports". Your report will be added to this page.

The rainfall dropped the temperature considerably in less then one hour. At 3:30pm, the temperature was 91.8°F, and by 4:30pm the temperature had dropped to 74.4°F, which is 17.4°F cooler! As a matter of fact, the high for the day was 94.7°F occurring at 2:37pm, and the low temperature of 73.5°F occurred about two hours later, at 4:45pm. Below, is the daily temperature graph showing this rapid fall in temperature as the rain moved into the area.

Lighting within this storm was quite intense as well, with the max strike rate per minute being 618 at 3:45pm. Throughout the entire day, we recorded and plotted 81,739 lightning events, with 43,162 of those being cloud-to-ground strikes.